Thursday, December 18, 2008

Train For Winter Survival Like The Cosmonauts

The following is no joke ---a German company called Space Travellers, "the first commercial Space Agency of the world," offers zero-gravity flights, jet flights, space flights and astronaut training for earthbound schlubs like you and me. Reading through the text of their website is surreal. It prods you to sign up for outlandish tours:--"you would like to fly a supersonic jet to feel the g-forces?"---using awkward English to comical effect: "the successor of the MIG-25 kidnaps you in a modern jet with Mach 2.4 into the stratosphere, so that you will see the earth with other eyes!" "You will be weightlessness!" "You will never forget in your life this experience!"

One of their many packages is their "Original Cosmonaut Winter Survival Training" in Russia, as pictured above. Oooo, yes! Sign me up! Those blue boots are so worth it.

As cold as it is here, you probably don't have to travel to Siberia to get the full training experience. But for those who are tempted to jump at this offer, I've provided the details of the program below, straight off the Space Travellers website:

Original Cosmonaut Training - Winter Survival Training - Russia

How to feel like an Cosmonaut:

This means first of all hard training, before he is able to be ready for his journey into the orbit. Cosmonaut training is a very long duration training, which requires, that the cosmonaut-participant first of all has to adjust himself into the perfectly new enviroment.

Since that the International Space Station ISS is constantly manned, a docked Russian Soyuz spaceship also always is in the orbit, with which the astronauts and cosmonauts can leave the space station in an emergency.

If it comes to such an unforeseeable event, everything must go very fast and the crew withdraws themselves within hours into the command capsule of the Soyuz spaceship and docks off. Here it can come to another landing point than in the Kazhakh quilts, the cosmonauts can land with the Soyuz into equatorial, water or all possible ice- or very cold areas.

You can learn in winter training with international crews a surviving in the eternal ice. This training is part of the original cosmonaut training, you will be a real team member. It is not a touristic event only for you, it is really a hard training, where you can have the completely experience of surviving after a emergency-landing in icy areas on the world.

You train with the cosmonauts and get from the outset your task: Handling the different rescue assistance of the Soyuz spaceship, building of an emergency accommodation, establishment of contact with the rescue team, which can arrive maximally in 36 hours at your landing place. You and your comrades are alone, posed so long on yourself and must furnish itself, so that you will have the chance to survive, and it does not come to more emergencies in your crew.